Archive/File: people/i/irving.david/libel.suit/transcripts/day007.08
Last-Modified: 2000/07/20
Q. No, all right. Let us use '77.
MR RAMPTON: My Lord, I think in 1991 it is likely to be in
part 2 because the book is written more or less ----
MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, but Mr Irving has the 1977 version,
so
shall we use that? It will be part 2 of that too,
will it
not?
MR RAMPTON: Yes. (To the witness): Can you tell us,
roughly
speaking, where 1943 starts in Hitler's War 1977?
A. About page 450.
Q. Thank you. So it will be volume 2 of that, my Lord.
MR JUSTICE GRAY: If we are looking for it, we will take a
lot
of time. Do you think we might come back to this?
A. My Lord, I will come back to it.
MR RAMPTON: I would be grateful. It is my fault, but the
index does not help.
A. So your point is that Himmler writes down the word
that
may actually have been used between the two of them.
. P-63
Q. Yes.
A. Yes.
Q. May have been. I quite agree it may not be verbatim
Hitler's word, but Himmler has certainly written down,
has
he not, what he thinks Hitler's intention is, has he
not?
A. Yes.
Q. Then when we get what one might call the bureaucratic
type
version, that word is transformed ----
A. Unambiguously.
Q. Well, as you say -- into another form which is deport?
A. Yes.
Q. Yes?
A. Yes.
Q. And, of course, as one must expect, there is then an
order
from Himmler to Muller that they should be deported?
A. Yes.
Q. You grumble about Himmler's exaggeration of the
numbers.
Have you noticed a suggestion -- it is in that Witte -
-
that in that figure he was including all the Jews in
the
French colonies, particularly those in North Africa?
A. That is not what the document actually says. It says
Jews
in ----
Q. You will find that in note 44.
A. --- Jews in France. I know that the French consider
those
colonies, or some of them, to be part of the
metropolitan
in France, but I think that in this document that
would be
. P-64
stretching the point. I am not going to quibble about
that. I just wanted to draw attention to the tendency
to
exaggerate figures.
Q. It might not be an intentional exaggeration, might it?
It
might be -- I am not saying whether it was or not --
I quite agree with you there were never 600,000 Jews
living in France at this time.
A. Let alone 700,000.
MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am not sure it really matters very
much.
MR RAMPTON: It does not matter at all. But then what
happened
next, leave out paragraph 19.8 of Longerich,
apparently on
the same day (and I am afraid I do not have this
document)
"Himmler made a suggestion or proposal to Hitler that
there should be a work camp set up for Jewish hostages
from France, Hungary and Rumania", three different
countries, "for a total 10,000 people"?
A. Yes, except we are not be given the actual quotation
or
document or it is just ----
Q. No.
A. --- summarized.
Q. Do you know of that document?
A. This is an important point, because there are other
documents that he does not refer to.
Q. This is in the IFZ, this document.
A. It, presumably, comes from one of the Himmler
microfilms.
Q. Yes. You do not recall seeing this document?
. P-65
A. Yes.
Q. You do. After the meeting, he goes on, Dr Longerich:
"Himmler sent an order to Muller to concentrate these
10,000 in a 'special camp' (Sonderlager). He stated:
'Certainly they should work there but under
conditions
whereby they remain healthy and alive." You notice
the
way I read it?
A. we are moving ahead at very great speed on this.
Q. We are still on 10th December 1942.
A. Yes, but we have already gone past the paragraph 19.7
at
the top of page 71 of Longerich and I did want to draw
the
court's attention to this very bold and adventurous
leap
from the word "Abschaffen" with the neutral
connotations
in only one line's length to using the word
"liquidate"
which is certainly not used between these two top
Nazis.
Q. "Dispose of" is what you use, I think?
A. Thank you very much, yes.
Q. Yes. That is not a very benign word, is it,
"disposal"?
A. No, but ----
Q. This is on page 462 of 1977.
A. One has this terrible problem when translating German,
when you have these multi-purpose words, to strike the
right nuance without leaning too far in one direction
or
the other.
Q. You see, in 1977, for want of a better word, you
believed
still in the Holocaust, did you not?
. P-66
A. I believed in the factories of death element of the
Holocaust.
Q. Yes. You had no difficulty in 1977 in reading the
word
"Abschaffen" as Fuhrerwunsch, if that is the right
thing,
that these 6 to 700,000 Jews should be disposed of,
not
removed from France, that has to happen first,
obviously?
A. Well, "disposed of" also does not necessarily imply
killing, but contains -- it is one nuance in that
direction from the dead centre neutral meaning of the
word, and I believe Miss Rogers will be able to
establish
that I then continued by stating immediately
afterwards
what the typed version of the document says which is
"transport away".
Q. That may be so. I do not know. She is trying to find
the
reference in 1991.
A. Yes.
MR JUSTICE GRAY: It may not be there at all?
A. Well, it certainly is, my Lord.
MR RAMPTON: It is there, but in a footnote.
MR JUSTICE GRAY: She will find it eventually. Let us
press on
in the meantime.
MR RAMPTON: But do you agree that the translation
"disposed
of", I accept that that is a fair translation of
"Abschaffen"?
A. Yes, I think it is exactly the right nuance.
Q. And the nuance -- construct for me, Mr Irving, if you
can,
. P-67
an English sentence in which, according to natural,
ordinary meaning, "dispose of" as applied to a person
or
people does not have a connotation of fatality in it?
A. Oh, yes, it happens in large companies the whole time,
downsizing. Additional staff are disposed of. That
does
not mean to say they are sent to the gas chambers.
Q. No. Disposed of?
A. Yes. It is exactly the right nuance that I applied
to
that word. That is my submission.
Q. So, "These Jews are merely redundant and we have to
let
them go"?
A. That is right.
Q. I see. Probably with some nice payment or other?
A. That is a rather cheap remark, if I may say so.
Q. I know, but, really, Mr Irving, do you really think
that
is what Himmler meant when wrote "Abschaffen"?
A. I remind you that this is a private note being written
by
Himmler for his own private files.
Q. Precisely.
A. He had no reason to use euphemisms. If they had said
"liquidate", as we have seen on other occasions, they
quite frankly talked about "keine liquiderung", did he
not? So why would he use a euphemism here?
Q. I am suggesting there is absolutely no difference
between
"dispose of" and "liquidate".
A. Well, why would he have used ----
. P-68
MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think, in a way, I have the point. I
understand the basis.
A. That is an important point. Why would he use a
euphemism
here when he is quite happy to use the plain, blunt
language elsewhere in his own handwritten notes,
particularly in view of the fact that when he dictated
the
actual memorandum to Muller, so there could be no
dispute,
he then used "Abtransportieren", to transport away.
MR RAMPTON: Yes, of course, and to the East, no doubt?
A. No, indeed. They were being transported away to
barrack
encampments being built in the Reich. We have the
documents on that which your Professor Longerich has
not
shown the court.
Q. What happened to them next?
A. We do not know, but, unfortunately, Longerich has not
introduced into his report the evidence that there are
encampments actually being built for them, reception
centres.
Q. Sorry, where was the Sonderlager which is referred to
in
paragraph 19----
A. Those were the special camps being set up for them.
MR JUSTICE GRAY: But when you say "they" were being
transported to the Reich, are you talking about the
10,000
or are you talking about -- whether it was 60,000 or
600,000 does not matter for present purposes?
A. Off the top of my head, I cannot say, my Lord.
. P-69
Q. It may be quite important ----
A. I agree.
Q. --- because one interpretation -- let me put this to
you
and see if you agree -- is that the 10,000 people for
one
reason or another were valuable to the Reich, maybe
because they whether qualified in some way?
A. Yes.
Q. Whereas the rest were not and that was why they were
going
to be "Abgeschaft" or whatever the word would be?
A. I will remind your Lordship of the fact that on this
very
same day, Himmler and Hitler on another page which is
not
before the court in this passage were discussing
selling
off Jews for hard currency. That may very well be
what is
going to happen to the 10,000 in the Sonderlager.
But the French Jews, in fact, ended up to a
very
large degree working in underground aircraft factories
and
so on inside the Reich. From my extraneous knowledge,
I know that from the biographies I have written of
Field
Marshal Milsche, and so on. I have read the records
of
the Air Ministry conferences so we know what happened.
Q. Is it or is it not a legitimate inference that if that
was
what was going to happen to the 10,000, something more
sinister was going to happen to the other French Jews?
A. No, it is not, my Lord. It could be they were going
to be
sent to work, as I say, in the German arms industry or
building fortifications or whatever which I happen to
know
. P-70
actually happened. A very large number of these
French
Jews from my own work that I have done previously on
the
biography of Field Marshal Milsche who, on Goring's
death,
would be in charge of German armaments, in charge of
the
aircraft factory, construction industry.
It cannot be ignored that I have a lot of
expertise, if I can call it like that, from other
records
and other books that I have written.
MR RAMPTON: Mr Irving, I have found one of these
documents,
but I do not at the moment know which one it is. My
Lord,
it is in H4 (ii) at footnote 183. I think it is at
182
that I do not have. Have you got that, Mr Irving?
A. Yes.
Q. It is a typed document. Again it looks as if it has
been
taken from a microfilm, does it not?
A. Yes.
Q. It is from Himmler because it says so at the top left-
hand
side and there are his initials at the bottom of the
page,
are there not?
A. Yes.
Q. On the right-hand side it says "Feld-Kommandostelle",
what
does that mean?
A. "Field Headquarters".
Q. 12th December 1942.
A. I am sorry. It just says "December 1942".
Q. You are quite right. I am sorry. I misread that.
. P-71
A. I would draw attention to that because this was
Himmler's
way of doing things, that he would always handwrite
the
day in. In other words, this is an authentic
document. We
are not challenging that. But there is a reason to
draw
attention to that because of something that comes up
in
later documents.
Q. Yes, I follow, and it has the top security
classification?
A. "Geheime Reichssache", yes.
Q. For an SS document?
A. Yes.

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